poudo

Hi Guys, just wondering if anyone has had any experience or has an idea as to how to get your PC to perform certain functions based on accessing it over the phone. For example, I want to call my home phone and if there's no answer after a specified number of rings, the modem will pick up, I put in a passcode, and I get to access a menu which will allow me to set up a recording schedule, say on Mythbuntu (or other PVR software).

Thanks,
Paul.

best4less

Get a PDA and use wifi or
Does it have to be done over the phone????

__________________
Please wipe your feet before walking all over me

Jalorathis

Im pretty sure you can set windows to have the modem pick up after x number of rings.

If you wish to control it from a phone then you might be able to find a piece of software that will automate the job but i think the simplest option would be to do it from a PDA with a built in modem, or even another laptop then run an application like VNC, or perhaps even just an SSH server/client will do the job. (i have no experience with mythbuntu.

Jalorathis

z80

I use a jaycar SMS controller (KC5400) ,and a nokia 5100 mobile phone with a prepaid sim

It controls functions such as resetting a pc, switching on an alarm system, but it can control events on a pc as long as they are pre-defined.


It is an incredibly secure system BTW.

fromaron

Old good PC-Anywhere ?

poudo

Will PC Anywhere do the job?

I'm thinking it would be handy - in case internet wasn't already available - to be able to set up recording schedules over the phone. So I need a menu that asks:
Please enter the date you would like to record, followed by the hash key...
Please enter the time you wish begin record ...
Please enter the number of hours you wish to record for (or the end time..)
For ABC SD press 1
For ABC HD press 2
For Seven SD press 3
For Seven HD press 4
etc...

If there's a computer program that recognises all the inputs, that's all I would need. Then I can script it out. If not, I'll write an application that does it.

But this is not the only example of what I would like to control. Perhaps (as other users have mentioned) things like an alarm??

fromaron

PC-Anwhere actually gives you a remote desktop via PSTN line, so you can simply choose yourself what you want to do.
Otherwise it would be interesting to know which program can do the voice menu and instead of putting your call to an extension will just start a program or script. It will be handy if you are somewhere in a bush and don't have a computer with you . Just a mobile to place a call and give instructions to this "Electronic Housekeeper"

intelliGEORGE

Electronics-Lab.com Blog DTMF

This should point you in the right direction.

z80

Use what i mentioned above...

use it with a parallel printer port...any drovers dog can write a basic program to fire off a batch file based on the binary status of port 378H.....

The batch file can contain the script from a mouse macro recorder program to do ANYTHING you want it to on a PC, and i do mean ANYTHING.


just SMS the code for channel, the code for hour, minute and she's away

jimbo123

You really like this 'mouse recorder program' don't you

Pepe

I have been thinking about trying one of these

Remote MSN Robot Review and Download,Remote Access Software,Networking Software

Remote MSN Command 1.1.03 review and download. Remote Control, Remote Shutdown, Files Transfer, F

They sound good but have no idea how well they actually work.

Mouse automation programs are great, I would recommend you have a look at Autoit v 3. - Mouse automation and much much more.

Pepe

z80

Yep...agreed, a very good program.

Pepe

I had a quick look at the two programs I put links to in my above post.

I could not get either it to work in the few minutes I played with it.

I think the concept is good though so it might be a job for autoit.
Should not be too hard to write a script to interact with msn and fire off programs etc based on the text conversation.

Would have prefered an already completed program as I really don't have the time at the moment to do too much scripting

If anyone tries these programs and has success I would really like to hear about it

Pepe

Edit: Got it to work, not quite what I am after, brings up the desktop of the remote computer and allowas you to control the remote pc. Might be useful to some but I am after something a lot simpler

Pepe

poudo

Thanks guys... I'll check this stuff out although being a coder, I'm also thinking this could be a good intro into .net 3.5's WWF. I've been designing Workflow applications at work, but I haven't had any hands on building and although it may be overkill, it could provide the base objects for either a web page or phone front-end.

Pepe

well I got it going with autoit. (sort of)

The reason I liked this option was it seemed to have a lot of flexibility

Control of the pc could be done from a pc with messenger installed, any pc with a browser using msn web chat, a phone with messenger and internet acess(3 xseries and N95)

Ran into a few problems along the way
Live messenger would not allow me to pick the message text off the screen, so switched to the old windows messenger.

That worked great, had messenger "chatting back" with menu options etc
BUT
then discovered that when the remote pc went into screen saver mode, or after i had remote desktopped to it and closed the connection, messenger seemed to "sleep" until I brought focus back to the screen,

I think I'll leave it for a while and do some more research.
Fantastic idea if it will work, maybe someone with more coding skills can get it to work, I'm fairly new at this

Pepe